Florida Asset Protection

Florida Asset Protection

There are over 100,000 licensed attorneys in the State of Florida, enough to fill the Rose Bowl. It naturally follows that there are many lawsuits filed for many reasons. Some are valid and justified, others are “shake-downs.” Billboards and TV ads promote personal injury attorneys hitting jackpots for their clients.

Business owners and investors find themselves in commercial lawsuits. Good, hard-working people meet financial distress leading to collection actions.

No matter how great are lives may be, few of us are immune to the medical, financial or business disasters that may suddenly threaten to take away what we’ve worked so hard to acquire.

This is why it’s crucial to live an asset-protected lifestyle. The best time to protect your assets is when you don’t have a care in the world. If you wait until bad things happen, like getting sued, the moves you make to shield assets from attack will likely fail.

In the law, there’s a concept called “fraudulent conveyance.” Generally speaking, this means it’s illegal to transfer title or restructure assets solely for the purpose of avoiding creditors’ claims. If you try to do this, the people bringing claims against you can challenge it and convince a court could overturn what you’ve done.

With regard to fraudulent conveyance, timing and intent are crucial. To reverse your actions taken to protect assets, the party chasing you has the burden of proving to the court that your intent behind those actions was to avoid their claims. That’s why making these moves before trouble comes is so critical. If you shield assets in a non-distressed, planning (proactive, not reactive) environment, it’s much more likely to hold up against challenges.

The good news is, there are many perfectly legal and ethical strategies to create an asset- protected and “judgment-proof” life. The way to achieve this is to own or control all of your assets in ways that prevent plaintiffs and creditors from taking them. Florida is a debtor-friendly state with many available legal protections against economic harm, if you know how to use them correctly.

Asset protection is not about hiding assets, tax evasion or other illegal or unsavory activities. It’s about building the best fort you can to protect what you own according to the available legal strategies. Not only is asset-protection planning the responsible thing to do, it would be irresponsible not to take advantage of available legal means to protect yourself and your family.

It may be impossible to become completely “bullet-proof,” but you can go a long way in protecting you and your family from attack. In many cases, good advance planning may not get you completely out of trouble, but can give you great negotiating leverage to significantly contain the damage and settle disputes for far less than you would have otherwise had to pay.

We counsel our clients on how to ethically and legally use the following asset protection tools and strategies, among others, for maximum protection to live with the peace of mind of knowing your assets are protected and you’re judgment-proof.

Limited Liability Companies and Other Corporate Entities

Land Trusts

Annuities and cash value life insurance policies

Off-shore trusts

Irrevocable Life Insurance Trusts

Personal property trusts

Jointly-owned marital property

Florida Homestead Law

Qualified retirement plans and pensions

Umbrella insurance policies

At CPC Law, we are passionate about asset protection. We counsel our clients on how to structure their lives and assets for maximum protection against all the bad things that may happen in life. Now is the time to act.